Kitchen 8 - Pistachio ice cream, Beetroot cured salmon with horseradish cream and rye bread and Hot smoked mackerel with cucumber and dill salad

I was really pleased with my food today. I don't know about the pistachio ice cream yet because we are not serving that until Friday. But all the other things came out really well, I felt.

The smoking of the mackerel I enjoyed immensely. Although I think next time I would maybe reduce the smoking time just a little bit. However, I guess that depends on the size of the fillet as well. With the mackerel we served a cucumber and dill salad. We had the choice of how to slice the cucumber and then also of how to present the food. The only requirement was to serve a starter size portion. So I sliced the cucumber lenghtways and let it marinate in the dressing. Then I rolled up each slice so that I had nice and placed the mackerel fillet carefully on to and this is what it looked like:

The second dish we had to serve was the beetroot cured salmon with a horseradish dressing and our rye bread (great bread by the way!). The salmon looked strange at first but once I had sliced it, it had a beautiful colour thanks to the curing with the beetroot. And this is how I arranged everything on my plate:

The bread was still a bit warm which made it difficult to cut. But all the more delicious to eat.